Getting video information from MediaInfo

You can also use curl | head to partially download the file before running mediainfo.

Here's an example of getting the dimensions of a 12 MB file from the web, where only a small portion (less than 10 KB) from the start needs to be downloaded:

curl --silent http://www.jhepple.com/support/SampleMovies/MPEG-2.mpg \
  | head --bytes 10K > temp.mpg
mediainfo '--Inform=Video;%Width%x%Height%' temp.mpg